WORLD'S FIRST POLYMER NOTE

Information on tyvek notes is still being researched & collated. Trial notes were done for Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela. American Bank Note Co. (ABNC) had the contract to produce paper notes for these countries. In the early 1980's it joined forces with Dupont to produce a more durable banknote. A commercial plastic material produced by Dupont - Tyvek- was used to produce these trial notes. ABNC had the printing plates and simply fed tyvek sheets through the printing presses instead of paper sheets.

It is not known whether it sought the permission of the respective central banks to do so (or indeed if it was required to do so) but it undoubtedly approached the particular banks with the so produced trials and set out to interest them in tyvek notes.

Costa Rica and Haiti agreed to a tyvek note issue. Haiti's notes are undated  produced under the law of 1979  but they are believed to have issued sometime in 1982. See below for more detail. Costa Rica's only issued tyvek note is dated 28.06.1983 which is most likely the date that the printing order was placed. The Haiti issue is understood to have lasted about 15 to 18 months. Apparently the inks did not bind to the tyvek successfully and in the humid tropical climate it came unstuck, smudging badly. It is presumed that Costa Rica's notes met a similar fate.

Some of the trials are also dated and this helps to pin point the time that ABNC embarked on this process in the early 1980's. For example, the El Salvador 5 Colones trial is dated 19 de Junio de 1980 which coincides with the date on P132A according to SCWPM. The trial also bears the date on the back of 10 de Diciembre de 1980

At the time, the British printer Bradbury Wilkinson was a subsidiary of ABNC and it secured a contract to print a One Pound note for the Isle of Man on tyvek. There was some form of technology transfer agreement and under this the tyvek was actually called Bradvek. The first notes appeared in 1983. These were not popular and a subsequent sale of Bradbury's by ABNC to Thomas De La Rue saw the end of the technology agreement and the cessation of the issue by the Isle of Man in 1988.

Wikipedia says : " In 1982 and 1983, the American Bank Note Company printed banknotes for Costa Rica (20 colones dated 1983 and trial notes of 100 colones) and Haiti (1, 2, 50, 100, 250 and 500 Gourdes, on DuPont's Tyvek polymers. These had fairly limited release, but did circulate in each country. Additional trial and specimen banknotes were developed for Honduras, Ecuador and El Salvador. Unfortunately, in tropical climates, ink did not bind well to the polymer and the notes began smearing quite badly. "

source: polymernotes.com/